clazzy

Clazzy

A cross platform JavaScript library that provides a classical interface to prototypal inheritance.

This project is now deprecated in favor of the ECMAScript 6 class syntax, this project will no longer be maintained. Sorry!

Usage

Creating a class

var Foo = Clazzy.create(
{
	// Constructor

	initialize : function ()
	{
		this.foo = 'foo';
	},

	// Instance methods

	bar : function ()
	{
		return 'bar';
	},

	baz : function (baz)
	{
		return baz;
	},

	// Static methods

	static :
	{
		qux : function ()
		{
			return 'qux';
		}
	}
});

var foo = new Foo();

foo.foo; // 'foo'

foo.bar(); // 'bar'

foo.baz('baz'); // 'baz'

Foo.qux(); // 'qux'

Note: Instance properties can be defined in the definition, however their inital value should be set in the constructor.

Creating a class that extends another class

var Bar = Clazzy.create(
{
	extend : Foo,

	initialize : function ()
	{
		this.super();

		this.corge = 'corge';
	},

	baz : function ()
	{
		return 'bar';
	},

	baz : function (baz)
	{
		return 'super ' + this.super(baz);
	}
});

var bar = new Bar();

bar.foo; // 'foo'

bar.corge; // 'corge'

bar.bar(); // 'bar'

bar.baz('qux'); // 'super qux'

Bar.qux(); // throws an error

Note:

• Static methods are not inherited.
• If a method overrides one of its base class methods, you can invoke the overridden method through the use of the super method.

Creating a class that includes another class

Clazzy provides a method of code reuse called includes. Behaving similarly to Ruby's mixins and PHP's traits, they enable a developer to reuse sets of methods freely in several independent classes living in different class hierarchies.

var Baz = Clazzy.create(
{
	include : [Foo],

	moo : function ()
	{
		return 'moo';
	}
});

var baz = new Baz();

baz.foo; // 'foo'

baz.bar(); // 'bar'

baz.baz('baz'); // 'baz'

baz.moo(); // 'moo'

Baz.qux(); // throws an error

Note:

• Static methods are not included.
• The super method, when invoked from an included method, does not reference the hierarchy of the class it's included in.
• The precedence order is that an inherited member from a base class is overridden by an included member, which in turn are both overridden by a member from the current class.

Getting started

Clazzy is available through the Node Package Manager (NPM), so you can install it like so:

npm install clazzy

Development

Grunt is used to handle the build process for this project. To perform a full build, use the build task:

grunt build

To only run tests use the test task:

grunt test

This also runs code quality checks using JSHint. Please refer to the .jshintrc file to familiar yourself with the rules.

License

This project is released under the MIT License.